“EU strengthens support to social entrepreneurship in Armenia to benefit young people in the country”
“Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development (SEED) programme for Green Growth in Borderline Communities” continues the scope of its activities. The programme is supported by the European Union and is implemented by the Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN) in Georgia in cooperation with the Green Lane NGO in Armenia. The program aims to record success and progress in the field of social entrepreneurship and environment in the borderline communities of two countries.
The program targets young people aged 15-29 from Shirak, Tavush, Lori marzes in Armenia and from Ninotsminda, Gori, and Akhtema regions in Georgia. These are borderline areas that struggle taking their own initiative in the field of entrepreneurship.
Taking under account the existing regional issues, the project implementation team chose youth as a main target, as they are the ones most in need of support.
Today, the youth of rural communities are not able to face the challenges of the time on their own, to get proper education, get acquainted with innovative technologies, sometimes they cannot even use the provided opportunities, thus intervention is needed to develop their skills.
The program aims to reduce the emigration within the population in the borderline regions, with creating favourable conditions for vulnerable young people to continue their education or to start a business.
Utilizing the potential of young people from borderline areas, the project aims to improve the environment of target groups and to promote green innovation, which can be the basis for the green entrepreneurship launch. Thus, the main mission of the program is to create opportunities for youth to work, study, and take their own steps in the field of entrepreneurship.
At the moment, a platform of interested individuals and organizations has been created, which effectively contributes to the creation of a Social Entrepreneurship (SE) and Green Innovation (GI) environment for the youth in the South Caucasus region.
The program had great resonance and the youth was supported not only in environmental, agricultural, and social entrepreneurship, but other fields as well like video making online trainings on “Creating a Social Video”. Fifty-nine participants were available in the two-day training from Lori, Tavush and Shirtk marzes, 40 female and 10 male. The training hosted film director Ruben Kazaryan. This was organized to give the youth chance to take part in the video making competition announced by Green Lane. In the frames of Green Week the beneficiaries of the project on September 24 took part in training titled Agrotourism Development in times of Covid-19. Total 45 participants were available, 31 female, 14 male.
Within the framework of the program, various training, competitions, seminars and workshops on social entrepreneurship, smart agriculture are organised aiming at developing the skills of young people, to motivate them to create their own small start-up businesses, as well as to ensure their sustainability. A competition dedicated to the Environmental Conservation Day was organised, during which the young people of the regions had to present their green ideas on how to save the planet. More than 70 young people participated in the competition, 15 of which were recognised as winners. Distance learning courses were organised for all participants on the topics of social entrepreneurship, green agriculture, and a special meeting was organised for the certificates and gifts ceremony for competition winners and active participants.
Within the framework of the program, another youth competition was organised, during which the young people tried to discover problems in their community and offer solutions through short videos. Long-distance training was organised for the youth in advance with the well-known Armenian film director living in Kazakhstan Ruben Ghazaryan, who gave them professional advice on how to approach the problems.
From September 21 to 25, a series of events entitled as “Green Week” took place, which is, in fact, a series of courses with four lessons per day. The summary of the above-mentioned competition and the results of other related events were also part of the program.
The project “Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development (SEED) for Green Growth in Borderline Communities“ is supported by the European Union, under the EU4Youth programme and is implemented by CENN (Georgia) in cooperation with Green Lane NGO (Armenia) and Kakheti Regional Development Foundation (Georgia).
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Yelaket.am News agency and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union